


Some Sunny Day

by StopitGerald



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alistair saved, Character survival, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, F/M, Hawke in the Fade, Long-Term Relationship(s), Lots of Crying, Married Couple, Nonbinary Hawke (Dragon Age), Post-Fade Trauma and Injury, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Romance, Soulmates, Spoilers for Here Lies the Abyss, Trauma, True Love, Vaginal Sex, oh and, playing loose with canon a bit, reference to past trauma, tagged E for the last chapter having optional naughty stuff, very long term lol my hawke is feral for anders
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:40:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28371030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopitGerald/pseuds/StopitGerald
Summary: Despite all the scrambling when the Champion was left in the fade, there seemed no hope for their survival.But they survived.They lie in a cool field in Fereldan, and think of their husband.
Relationships: Anders/Hawke (Dragon Age), minor Cullen/Female Inquisitor
Kudos: 1





	1. Sweetgrass

**Author's Note:**

> Aight same drill! My hawke is NB, but AFAB, romanced Anders and they canonically have a gaggle of adopted children. Hawke falls out of rift while surviving the fade, and makes their way to skyhold to get to Varric, only to discover their husband has arrived unexpectedly in the fort.

One moment they’re in the fade, sulphuric fog heavy in their lungs, sweat beading down their forehead, terror gripping their heart like every second it had been since they’d fallen through the rift with the inquisitor.

And the next second their back is colliding with mellow, dewy sweetgrass and dark, earthy soil. Their eyes fixed above on a bright blue sky. The sky is up, and the ground is down, and their body is following the laws of gravity that they’d only just began to forget. It is… normal.

Normal.

Thedas, Home, Normal.

The smoke is gone from their nose, the constricting atmosphere disappeared, it no longer smells like sulphur and oxidized iron, but warm soil and fresh sky. The screeches of demons following at the heel, chasing them through every crag of the fade, gone. Only soft breeze through the grass tickling their ears and the song of a bird nearby

The confusion settles down in waves, starts as the sudden spike of their surroundings shocking them out of the stupor they’d entered when they’d fallen back-first on the ground.

There had been a blinding green light, just like when they’d fallen in- and now… they’d fallen  _ out _ .

The next wave is asking them, “where?” 

Somehow, they must’ve fallen through a rift, one of the strays that the inquisitor is working so swiftly to close, and now…

It’s Fereldan, it  _ smells _ like Fereldan. The grass is luscious, they notice, raising the strength to gently stroke a hand over the blades around their body, full and blindingly green. The sky a bright blue and the air crisp and chilly. 

Kirkwall and the Free Marches never had such blue skies, and Orlais air isn’t so nippy. 

The nightmare had been too formidable to ever hope to slay alone- but they’d bought the inquisitor and Alistair time to escape. They’d bought  _ Varric  _ time to escape. Their best friend.

They hadn’t died to the creatures' taunts, to the demons crawling out of the shadows, to the horrifying pictures of their loved ones stricken dead that the creature flashed through their mind. 

They managed to carve out a path for themselves. But… starving, terrified, alone, both too hot and too cold- too much, not enough, floating and trapped. 

They’d begun to lose hope that they’d find a way out. There was no spell, no conjuring that could free them from the raw fade, no simple little doorway for lost fools. It was an impenetrable doom.

And then.

They’d fallen out.

And now…

What did everyone think?

Did they think they were dead? Did they expect them to emerge? What about… what about Varric?

Anders?

The confusion changes place with terror, with worry- but ever so different than that they’d experienced in the Fade. Creeping terror, concern for their loved ones. 

Their entire body feels like they’ve been plunged into ice cold river water, tugging them along, freezing their veins beneath pale skin. The bodily shock of falling through a rift, coupled with the dramatic change in the feel of the world around them, against their skin, they feel like they’ve shed and grown a new set of skin.

The mental shock is different.

Too many emotions cover them at once, fear for what’s transpired since they’ve been gone, worry, confusion.

Am I really in Fereldan? Am I really alive? My friends… my  _ family…  _ How  _ long _ has it been?

It felt like years- it felt like a decade of running, hiding, fighting to even stay alive, each next breath a blessing from the maker. And at this point, Hawke isn’t even sure if the maker is real or not. Did this experience prove his existence? Or did it smear any hope that there is some reigning benevolence for the peoples of Thedas?

This is the most critical thought they’ve had in months. Life is usually easier if one takes it as it comes, without resistant thought. But their mind rattles like an elderly scholar.

It feels like static, it feels like lightning strikes, it feels like  _ joy _ .

As suddenly as they’d fallen to the ground in an earthquake of bending, green light, they’re overcome with heart wrenching, stomach twisting elation.

They hear something strange, and that’s when they notice they’re  _ laughing.  _ It’s joy filled, but shaky and hoarse, the sound barely more than a cough, and their fists are wrapping around handfuls of grass and dirt, their toes curl in their boots, with the soles worn out.

They close their eyes against the blinding midday sun and sky and feel loose tears rolling down their gaunt, sweaty and ash stained cheeks.

  
  


They’re  _ free _ .

They are alive, and wherever, whenever, and whoever they are. 

They’re  _ free. _

  
  


—

  
  
  



	2. Him

All they know is fingers in their hair, safe, familiar arms wrapped around their shoulders, the scent of sage and cedar in their nose, warmth against their chest as they’re pulled against a slim body.

And tears- the sound and sight and salty smell of tears. Theirs and his alike. They are crying, tears spill down their cheeks to their jaw and drop onto the man’s ragged blue overcoat, but he is  _ sobbing _ . His cries are untamed and unabashed, his entire frame shakes like fallen leaves as he grips at them and hoists them close like his life depends on it, like if he lets go they’ll disappear. 

His fingers will leave bruises on their shoulders, waist, the back of their neck, and he can’t seem to choose one place to hold them at. He needs it all, needs to feel them alive and warm and real in his arms.

“I thought I’d never see you again. I thought you’d  _ died.” _

They hug him even tighter, winding fingers into his hair, still chalky golden, thin, and straight, but long to his shoulders, now, and hanging about them like a curtain, streaks of gray like comet tails. he’s grown a closely shaved beard, and his eyes look like he’s seen the maker and came back to spread the good news. Bright and starry and wet with tears of disbelief, of adoration, of joy. 

They feel his stubble as they brush their foreheads together, as his arms nearly strangle the breath out of them, and then he’s kissing them. And it feels like it’s been years. It’s only been months, but this kiss feels like everything they’ve ever shared all packaged into one action. It is “I love you”, it is “I’m so sorry”, it is “I missed you,” it is “never go again,”

He’s kissing them hard, his face against theirs, his hands cupping a rounded jaw. They kiss back like he is the oxygen they breathe.

Out of breath from the kisses, from arms wrapped around each other so tightly, they pull back enough to rest ones nose on the others cheek, eyes shut, sharing a body, a heart, reuniting their souls.

“Anders, my  _ heart _ .” 

They choke with emotion at the sound of his name, at the beautiful shape of it forming on their lips. They’d professed their love for him, and their regret, sorrow, terror, at leaving him alone in this world when they’d thought they would die in the fade, and now- they are not dead, and he is nestling his head under their chin, resting against them with hands gripping white.

They do not know it, but he is listening to their heart, the wild thrum of it like moth wings against their rib cage from exertion, from tenderness and the emotional shake of seeing his face again, after what had felt like  _ years _ left alone in the shape of the fade.

They only realize they’ve both collapsed to the ground when the wet earth of post-rain soil soaks into the knees of their new breeches. The armor and clothes they’d fallen back to the ground from in the rift had been torn, bloody, and caked with unknown fade-source substances.

They’d fallen into the Hinterlands in Fereldan. After a disorienting amount of time spent smelling the forest and eyeing the great blue and feeing grass and dirt beneath them, they’d struggled to their feet, gaunt with malnutrition, with pain in all of their limbs from  _ running _ away from demons, spirits, all reaching out to harm them. 

Afterwards, they’d struggled, slow and steady on aching bones, to a nearby cabin, and the couple, after staring at this bloody and torn apart stranger on their porch like they’d fallen from the sky, which, they had, they’d offered up directions to the Crossroads. Arriving had lead them to finding their way back to Skyhold among some soldiers, who’d stared at them in disbelief and spit their ales out when they announced who they were.

That’s when they knew everyone  _ had  _ thought them dead.

It only made them more desperate to get back to Varric, only more desperate to pray he hadn’t sent a letter to Anders just yet.

But he had.

And Anders had already managed to get away from where they had hidden their love away from

harm and persecution. And he had come straight to Skyhold.

They’d marched through those gates, the men calling for the inquisitor like they’d all caught fire, and a small chaos had erupted. The inquisitor appeared at the tops of the stairs to the main hall, Cullen had come stumbling behind her, and then  _ Varric _ .

He’d  _ pushed _ the inquisitor out of his way without so much as a sideways glance and quite literally lept down the stairway. 

Varric does not usually care what others think, but he is a composed man- usually.

He had thrown himself in Hawke’s arms and cried against their skin, and Hawke had promptly burst into tears after him, falling to his height to hold their best and dearest friend close to them. He had tried to start chewing them out, tears still staining his face, about self sacrifice, about what they had left behind- but then Anders had walked out of a doorway somewhere across the green of the courtyard.

Every other sound, every voice calling out and exclaiming at the born again Champion of Kirkwall, it had all drowned out to a dull buzz, like they’d been knocked on their ass by a stray immolation cast and gone deaf at the impact.

He was all there was, all there ever was.

And now, he’s close to them- warm like a furnace and sweet like honey, and they’re surely being stared at, gawked at, but neither of them could care about anything less. 

_ Let them look, let them see the imfamous Kirkwall Apostate reunited with the Champion, with the Champion who would surely kill any who even looked at him wrong _ .

And that is what they are. Of all of their titles, they are his protector. From the masses, from those who disagree, from himself.

“I was going  _ mad _ without you. Justice was… it was so  _ loud.  _ I can’t sleep, I can’t- I can’t-“

He begins to sob again after his whispers to their ear, 

“I’m here, Anders,”

And they can  _ feel _ the electric static, the aura from Justice begin to fade, to burn away, to be unable to break through and seize his mind from him- because he is afraid of them.

Justice has learned like every other sap in the country, Hawke does not lay down, Hawke does not let others walk on them, and Hawke does not let anyone  _ touch _ Anders.

It took 6 years to earn him.

The feeling between them is not summed up by love, it is not summed up by the amount of children they’ve now parented, nor the rings on their fingers and vows they’ve shared. It is something that  _ is _ unexplainable. It is something they both feel in the marrow of their bones, in the beating strings of their hearts, in the intertwined pieces of their souls- it is why the cracks in Anders’ rough skin, between wiry golden hairs on his arms and chest, glows blue with excitement when they’re near, it is why Hawke’s hair catches on fire by accident when they see him enter a room with that  _ grin _ on his face.

It is why the touch and feel of the other against their body makes it feel like everything in the universe is right again.

The despair he’d felt when Varric had sent the letter… he had fallen to his knees and  _ screamed _ . His children had been filled with worry and terror, as he’d broken down on the floor of their cabin, as he’d began to break things, to lose his mind.

In the morning he had gathered himself, prayed to the maker, now dead and meaningless to him without Hawke, to protect his children. And he’d left to skyhold.

Now they’ve collapsed to tall grass, a puddle of four sets of limbs, two beating hearts conjoined, and there  _ is  _ a crowd around them. Hawke sees Varric, and he is weeping openly- for them, for his best friend to be reunited with the love of their life.

They run their fingers on one hand through Anders’ hair, capturing his cheek to look into deep, pinebark eyes, and their other finds his own digits, coiling together in a firm grip-

“I love you,” they say, “I love you.”

“My dear, my heart, I love you.”

  
  
  



End file.
